Under the Oaks 10K & Half Marathon Challenge

An exclusive refuge for millionaires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jekyll is a 4000-year-old barrier island with 10 miles of beaches. Today it’s an unusual clash of wilderness, historically preserved buildings, modern hotels and a massive campground. It’s an easily navigable place – you can get around by car, horse or bicycle.

With that being said, the Under the Oaks Run is the place to be!!

The annual Under the Oaks Half Marathon is set to take runners on an out-and-back loop tour of Jekyll Island, one of the most beautiful and historic of Georgia’s “Golden Isles,” which played a role in the creation of the U.S. federal reserve system back in the early 20th century.

Known perhaps best today for its historic Jekyll Island Club Hotel, whose moss-draped oak trees tower over the grassy lawns inside the Jekyll Island Historic District, the island played host to a meeting in 1910 of Senator Nelson Aldrich and the assistant secretary of the Treasury A. Piatt Andrew, as well as five of the nation’s leading bankers. From that came the legislation that created the banking system we know today as the Federal Reserve.

But the island is known to most people for much more than that now, as much of it is protected as a state park — by law, 65 percent of the land on the island must be set aside and left in as natural a state as possible, with plenty of parks for the people of Georgia to enjoy.